Is it? Anyone who watched rich owners get public funding for sports stadiums and arenas in Minnesota and elsewhere may not be surprised. Politics is the art of wearing down the people. Keep asking for something wildly unpopular, and eventually people will tire of putting up enough objections to it.

A month ago, the idea that women’s health wouldn’t be covered or people with pre-existing conditions would have difficulty finding affordable coverage, sank the Republican measure, which was so flawed that it did the unthinkable: It made Obamacare more popular.

So the hard-liners in the House went to work and made the measure even more hard line, while exempting Congress from its provisions, and now it’s likely to pass thanks to a single Republican vote, which may well be Minnesota Republican congressman Erik Paulsen, who was quoted on MinnPost on Tuesday as not having digested the full bill yet.

Paulsen is a likely “yes” vote because (a) when’s the last time Paulsen bucked his party and (b) he spoke on the House floor in support of the previous version of the bill just before House leadership stabbed him in the back by pulling the bill. Paulsen is a good party soldier who continues to confirm that last November’s Star Tribune editorial endorsing him was a work of utter fiction.

“Seventeen percent of the people supported this legislation last time,” Sen. Al Franken, DFL-Minn., told MPR’s Cathy Wurzer this morning. “And this is worse. Seventeen percent is the same number of people who claim to have seen a ghost.”

With time, the details of the bill will come out. But time is working against the Republican measure, which is why it’s up for a vote today. Details matter, but details can sink legislation if people find out what’s in it.

The bill, according to ABC News, has many of the elements that made it unpopular before. A 30-percent price hike for people who let insurance lapse, significantly increased premiums over the next decade for older people, the option of providing no coverage for pregnancy and mental health services, and a limit on Medicaid payments to states, which most certainly will result in low-income people losing access to health care.

These are all protections which congressional Democrats were too scared to defend in the last campaign.

Today, the Wall St. Journal — certainly no liberal rag — reports that a “little-noted provision” in the bill could affect people who have the luxury of not caring about today’s events because they’ve got employer-provided health insurance.

They could lose a cap on out-of-pocket expenses for medical coverage, the paper says.

It’s part of a last-minute amendment that included giving states the right to remove all the coverage people objected to removing when the bill was up for a vote weeks ago.

Large employers could choose coverage rules from any state in its provided insurance, even states that don’t require coverage or out-of-pocket limits, even if you work in a state that does, the Journal says.

Under the House bill, large employers could choose the benefit requirements from any state—including those that are allowed to lower their benchmarks under a waiver, health analysts said. By choosing a waiver state, employers looking to lower their costs could impose lifetime limits and eliminate the out-of-pocket cost cap from their plans under the GOP legislation.

The measure would give employers added flexibility to take steps that could lower costs by limiting more-expensive coverage areas. And it would lessen the federal regulation of insurers, a goal of GOP lawmakers who believe the ACA is an example of government overreach.

The impact on employer plans expands the scope of the health bill to affect, potentially, everyone not insured by Medicare or small-business plans, since the bill also includes cuts to Medicaid and changes to the individual market. Employer health plans are the single largest source of health insurance in the country, with about 159 million Americans receiving coverage through their jobs

The good news, if there is any good news for working stiffs, is that we at least know about the provision, thanks to the Journal. The bad news is not everyone reads the Journal and knows what’s in the legislation.

A lobbyist for big business told the paper that “even if self-insured health plans are no longer banned from imposing annual or lifetime limits, they’re unlikely to attempt to squeeze the toothpaste back into the tube.”

Which doesn’t explain why Republican lawmakers want so badly to provide the option for something unlikely to happen.

In case this is not clear. Congress is about to vote on a health care bill they haven't read. No study to determine cost or # of ppl covered

About the blogger

Bob Collins has been with Minnesota Public Radio since 1992, emigrating to Minnesota from Massachusetts. He was senior editor of news in the ’90s, ran MPR’s political unit, created the MPR News regional website, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day laments that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.

NewsCut is a blog featuring observations about the news. It provides a forum for an online discussion and debate about events that might not typically make the front page. NewsCut posts are not news stories.